Language and Cultural Barriers Faced By Foreign Students In The Library Services

Universities around the world have challenges to improve their performance and quality in
order to be known as a world-class university. To catch up with the global society of the 21st
century, those universities have to take an action to fulfill their role in supporting academic
and research activities. These challenges make those universities have to be engaged,
connected and actively interacted with the international communities by providing
international programs and services which mostly conducted in English. A library is one of the
university's facilities that has a main role to support students' activities. This study aims to
identify the language and cultural barriers aspects that commonly faced by foreign students
when using library services. A survey was distributed among foreign students in the Graduate
School of Library, Information and Media Studies, University of Tsukuba. Those students
were asked about their Japanese proficiency, perception towards library services, perception
towards librarian performance, and language and cultural barriers in library services. This
study deeply analyses the availability of the information and relation to the effectivity of
library services, expected professional competence in a global community, and respondents'
ratings towards overall foreign student's library services. The findings of this study can be
useful for the librarian and the university library managerial to improve their services and to
provide the proper services in assisting non-Japanese-speaking foreign students to make an
optimal use of the services and resources provided by the university library.